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Chickcomics.com welcomes all opinions from any religion or viewpoint in the common appreciation of Chick tracts. This blog, however, will highlight religious events and controversies that would be of special interest to regular Chick readers. You don't have to agree with them or each other, but if you read Chick tracts or Battlecry, you might expect these type stories to be addressed. (Sorry, no personal attacks allowed.) All main postings are from ChickComics.com writers and any responses are from the public

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Billionaire Offers $65 Million to Cure Queer Daughter

A Hong Kong billionaire has offered up a staggering, if bizarre, "marriage bounty" to any man who can woo his married lesbian daughter.

Business Insider reports that Cecil Chao Sze-tsung publicly announced the $65 million "reward" after hearing that Gigi Chao had eloped with her long-term female partner to France.

Deeming reports of his daughter's same-sex wedding "false," Chao told the South China Morning Post (via CTV News), "I don't mind whether he is rich or poor. The important thing is that he is generous and kind-hearted."

In addition to the "dowry," Chao has also pledged to help the successful suitor launch his own business. He called the prize money "an inducement to attract someone who has the talent, but not the capital, to start his own business," according to CTV News.

Whether or not Chao, who owns Cheuk Nang (Holdings) Ltd., is truly qualified to give marriage advice to anyone (gay or straight) is questionable given his apparent playboy reputation. The 76-year-old tycoon, who has never been married, is said to have once bragged about sleeping with 10,000 women, GlobalPost points out. Nonetheless, he continued his plea by describing his daughter as "a very good woman with both talents and looks. She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work."

No news about whether or not prospective suitors have come forward, but it seems unlikely Gigi will revert. The 33-year-old, who graduated from the University of Manchester and now works as a director at her father's company, was in a seven-year-long relationship with her new "partner" before they tied the knot in France.

The BBC reports that Gigi called her father's plan "entertaining," and has said she won't worry about it until a suitor has been found. See Chick's WOUNDED CHILDREN.

“There continues to be erroneous implications in the media that Chick-fil-A changed our practices and priorities in order to obtain permission for a new restaurant in Chicago. That is incorrect. Chick-fil-A made no such concessions, and we remain true to who we are and who we have been."

"And while our sincere intent has been to remain out of this political and social debate, events from Chicago this week have once again resulted in questions around our giving. A part of our corporate commitment is to be responsible stewards of all that God has entrusted to us. Because of this commitment, Chick-fil-A's giving heritage is focused on programs that educate youth, strengthen families and enrich marriages, and support communities. We will continue to focus our giving in those areas. Our intent is not to support political or social agendas."

Friday, September 21, 2012

Mega Church Waited On Rape Charges

TULSA, Okla. — A 17,000-member megachurch deep in Oklahoma's Bible Belt has been rattled by allegations that five employees waited two weeks to report the rape of a 13-year-old girl in a campus stairwell, allegedly by a church worker.

Tulsa police say the girl is among at least three victims of alleged sex crimes by two former employees of Victory Christian Center who face criminal charges. A child crimes investigator says more victims could surface as police continue to investigate.

Authorities, however, fear some parishioners in the large, tight-knit south Tulsa congregation may choose to pray about the allegations rather than provide concrete evidence.

Police said this week that the worldwide ministry's pastor and co-founder, Sharon Daugherty, whose daily broadcasts are beamed via satellite to more than 200 countries, knew about the abuse allegations, but trusted ministry employees to follow in-house policies on reporting such incidents.

Former church employee Chris Denman, 20, was arrested Sept. 5 for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl in a stairwell before a church service on Aug. 13. He also is charged with molesting a 15-year-old girl sometime between Aug. 13 and Aug. 17. He has pleaded not guilty and faces an Oct. 11 preliminary hearing, court records show.

Another ex-employee, 23-year-old Israel Shalom Castillo was arrested Thursday morning after turning himself in at the Tulsa jail. He is charged with making a lewd proposal to a child and using a computer to commit a sex crime.

Prosecutors this week also charged five church employees – including Daugherty's son and daughter-in-law, who are both youth pastors – for failing to report the alleged assault between Aug. 15 and Aug. 30. John Daugherty, Charica Daugherty, Paul Willemstein, Anna George and Harold "Frank" Sullivan each face one misdemeanor count of failing to report child abuse and are due to be arraigned Wednesday in Tulsa County District Court.

Tulsa attorney Jason Robertson, who is representing the five employees, did not return a phone message seeking comment Thursday afternoon. An assistant in his firm indicated he was out of town.

The ministry – founded in 1981 by Sharon and the late Billy Joe Daugherty and shaped in a similar mold to Tulsa televangelist Oral Roberts' charismatic Christian ministries – issued statements this week accepting responsibility for the lapse in reporting. A request to interview Daugherty was declined by a public relations firm hired by Victory Christian Center.

In a statement to The Associated Press issued Wednesday, the church said its employees failed to follow a written policy requiring any allegation of abuse to be reported by employees to the state's Department of Human Services, and internally within one hour to their department head and the director of human resources.

The church explained that staff in the ministry's youth department learned of the allegations and spent about a week checking it out before reporting it to supervisors and human resources. Once the complaint reached HR, "that department did not follow its own reporting policy," the ministry admitted in the statement.

It was unclear from the ministry statement which of the allegations the youth department checked into on its own.

Sullivan, the HR director, fired the two men Aug. 24, and then left a message with a member of the church who works with an anti-child trafficking organization to seek advice on whom to contact. Sullivan was advised to call police on Aug. 27. The ministry said Sullivan exchanged voicemails with an officer until Aug. 30, when they finally connected and the officer told Sullivan to dial 911, which he did that day.

"We deeply regret that our employees did not report these incidents to authorities within the proper amount of time. This failure within our organization weighs heavily on us, because our purpose is to help people and minister to their needs," the church said in the statement to AP. "Our internal response was unacceptable, and we are taking the proper steps to correct it."

The five employees charged with failure to report abuse have been suspended by the ministry while it decides disciplinary action, the organization said.

Police Det. Cpl. Greg Smith, who works in the child crisis unit, said the ministry has fully cooperated with investigators since the alleged abuse was reported.

"There was a couple of weeks in which they were either unsure of what to do or didn't do it, or who knows what," he said. "There was a couple weeks where we probably lost some evidence."

Smith said police are pursuing cases involving at least two more victims and another suspect. In one of the cases, police have failed to connect with the accuser. In the other, the victim's parents are not cooperating, Smith said,

"They made a comment that the church is handling the situation and they're going to continue to pray about it," Smith said Thursday. "We're still hoping to convince them to go forward with it." See Chick's WOUNDED CHILDREN.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Was Jesus Married?

A discovery by a Harvard researcher may shed light on a controversial aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King says she has found an ancient papyrus fragment from the fourth century that, when translated, appears to indicate that Jesus was married.

The text from the New Testament is being dubbed "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife." The part of it that's drawing attention says, "Jesus said to them, 'my wife'" in the Coptic language. The text, which is printed on papyrus the size of a business card, has not been chemically tested to verify its dating, but King and other scholars have said they are confident it is a genuine artifact.

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said at a conference in Rome on Tuesday. "This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions."

King, who focuses on Coptic literature, Gnosticism and women in the Bible, has published on the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala. She presented her research Tuesday evening in Rome, where scholars are gathered for the International Congress of Coptic Studies.

The idea that Jesus was unmarried and chaste is largely accepted by Christian denominations and forms the backbone of the practice of celibacy among Roman Catholic priests.

"Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex," said journalist and author Michael D'Antonio, who writes about the Catholic Church, in a blog on The Huffington Post. "If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity."

The quote about Jesus' wife is part of a description of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. In the conversation, Jesus talks about his mother twice and speaks once about his wife. One of them is identified as "Mary." His disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy of being part of their community, to which Jesus replies, “she will able to be my disciple.”

The fragment has eight incomplete lines of writing on one side and is badly damaged on the other side, with only three faded words and a few letters of ink that are visible, even with the use of infrared photography and computer-aided enhancement.

The private owner of the papyrus first approached King in 2010. King said she didn't believe the document was authentic, but the owner persisted. She then asked the owner to bring the papyrus to Harvard, where she became convinced it was a genuine early Christian text fragment. Along with Princeton University professor Anne Marie Luijendijk and Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, King claims to have confirmed the document is real. The document's owner has not been named and King said he does not want to be identified.

It's unclear when the text was initially discovered. The owner who showed it to King found it in 1997 in a collection of papyri that he acquired from the previous owner, who was German. The papyri included a handwritten German description that had the name of a now-deceased professor of Egyptology in Berlin who called the fragment a "sole example" of a document that claims Jesus was married.

The scholars believe the text is from Egyptian Christians before the year 400, as it is written in the language used at that time. Since writing appears on both sides of the fragment, scholars believe it came from a codex, a kind of book, and not a scroll. The scholars also believe the document is a translation of an earlier one that was likely written in Greek.

King notes in her research that the idea of Jesus' celibacy hasn't always existed, and that early Christians debated whether they should marry or practice celibacy. It was not until around the year 200 that Christian followers began to say Jesus was unmarried, according to a record King cites from Clement of Alexandria. In his writing, Clement -- an early theologian -- said that marriage was a fornication put in place by the devil, and that people should emulate Jesus by not marrying.

One or two decades later, Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa declared that Jesus was "entirely unmarried" and told Christians to remain single. But Tertullian did not come out against sex altogether and allowed couples to get married one time, denouncing divorce and remarriage as overindulgent. A century later, the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy said in the New Testament that people who forbid marriage are going by the "doctrines of demons," but did not include anything about Jesus being married in order to make the point.

The point of view that ultimately became dominant was that celibacy is preferred as a high sexual virtue among Christians, but that marriage is needed for the sake of reproduction.

"The discovery of this new gospel," King said, "offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus's marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus's Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise."

The life of historical Jesus is often a matter of controversy, and this is not the first time it's been proposed that Jesus was married. Most recently, Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" depicted Jesus as being married to Mary Magdalene. The book was published as fiction, but nonetheless attracted loud criticism from Vatican officials.

UPDATE: 4:28 p.m. -- Speaking on a conference call Tuesday from Rome, King said that some people who have read about the discovery have asked if the papyrus fragment was describing Jesus as being married to the Christian faith, not to a woman.

"One cannot overrule that it might be him saying 'my wife as a church,' but in the context where he's talking about 'my mother' and 'my wife' and talking about 'my disciple,' the one thing you would not say is that the church would be 'my disciple.'"

Even before King's discovery, there has been speculation that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. "I do not think Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene," King clarified Tuesday, adding, "whether he was or was not married ... I really think the tradition is silent and we don't know."

King also said that a professor who saw her report asked her if the text on the papyrus could have been a homily and not a gospel, an idea she said she had not considered.

King added that she hopes the discovery will diminish the view outside of academic circles that the debate over marriage and sexuality in the early church is "fixed and over." In current church debates over issues such as same-sex marriage and marriage among Catholic priests, "having more voices from the early church and a better, more accurate version of early Christianity is more helpful," she said.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Obama Reacts To "2016" Movie

President Obama's campaign has issued a response to "2016: Obama's America," the anti-Obama documentary directed by author Dinesh D'Souza and John Sullivan. Obama's camp has dismissed the film as "an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the president."

"2016: Obama's America" is a documentary based on the 2010 book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," written by D'Souza, which claims Obama's interests lie in an anti-colonial agenda that will ultimately hinder America's growth and progress. The film has been in the headlines since it picked up steam in the box office after a wide release on Aug. 24. To date, it is the No. 2 highest-grossing political documentary behind Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," earning $26 million total, according to Deadline.com.

However, despite the notable box office draw, the anti-Obama flick has been blasted by liberal critics.

"[D'Souza] attempts to hide his lies behind a pseudo-scholarly presentation and glossy production values cannot withstand basic scrutiny," writes the Obama campaign. "The facts show that '2016: Obama’s America' is nothing more than an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks."

D'Souza has defended "2016: Obama's America" which, like his book, draws quotes directly from Obama's own writings, including "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father." In fact, many of the most damning lines in the movie are voiced by Obama from his "books on tape".

"I was thinking, 'Haven't you guys read Obama's book? He wrote practically 500 pages on this subject,'" D'Souza previously told The Huffington Post's Joe Satran. "And then I noticed that Obama had read his own book in audiobook. I began to listen to it, and I thought, 'It's all here in his own voice! If only I could take some of this stuff, critical points, and make a documentary, it would be very helpful for people.'"

Adding, "This was not intended to be a 'Don't Vote For Obama' film, but rather to be a 'Discover The Real Obama' film. There's no question that I knew there would be intense interest in politics this year and so it made sense to drop the film at a time when Americans care more than usual about politics. But it's not specifically aimed at the election."

"Rev" Jesse Jackson Promotes Gay Marriage

The Rev. Jackson Jackson is urging Maryland voters to vote in favor of a ballot measure this fall that would legalize marriage of gays and lesbians in the state. Governor Martin O'Malley signed a marriage equality bill, passed by the legislature, but the voters will decide in November.

“The culture has had to expand,” Jackson said at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last week in an interview for my SiriusXM OutQ radio program, discussing marriage for gays and lesbians. “For so long we thought it was a sin for blacks to have freedom. We thought it was a sin for black and white men and women to interrelate. We’ve grown in our appreciation of the fact that we live in our faith, and our faith may live under the law. All citizens deserve constitutional protections. You know, you have have a right not to agree with interracial marriage but no one should be denied rights under the law.”

Regarding the vote in Maryland, where a large African-American community could have an major influence, Jackson reached out to voters.

Jackson did not address the numerous Biblical condemnations of homosexuality. After being discovered that he had had a mistress and "love child" for years, Jackson has become increasingly secular and less church oriented.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Obama Snubs Israel

WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM, Sept 11 (Reuters) - In a highly unusual rebuff to a close ally, the White House said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama would not meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a U.S. visit later this month, as tensions escalated over how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.

The apparent snub, coupled with Netanyahu's sharpened demands for a tougher U.S. line against Iran, threatened to plunge U.S.-Israeli relations into crisis and add pressure on Obama in the final stretch of a tight presidential election campaign.

An Israeli official said the White House had refused Netanyahu's request to meet Obama when the Israeli leader visits the United States to attend the U.N. General Assembly, telling the Israelis "the president's schedule will not permit that."

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor denied Netanyahu's request had been spurned, insisting instead that the two leaders were attending the General Assembly on different days and would not be in New York at the same time.

Netanyahu has had a strained relationship with Obama, but they have met on all but one of his U.S trips since 2009. The president was on a foreign visit when the prime minister came to the United States in November 2010.

By withholding a meeting, Obama could alienate some Jewish and pro-Israel voters as he seeks a second term in the Nov. 6 election. Republican rival Mitt Romney has already accused Obama of being too tough on Israel and not hard enough on Iran.

The White House's decision could signal U.S. displeasure with the Israeli leader's intensifying pressure for Obama to set specific red lines on Iran.

Word that the two men would not meet came on the same day that Netanyahu said the United States had forfeited its moral right to stop Israel from taking action against Iran's nuclear program because it had refused to be firm with Tehran itself.

Netanyahu has argued that setting a clear boundary for Iran's uranium enrichment activities and imposing stronger economic sanctions could deter Tehran from developing nuclear weapons and mitigate the need for military action.

In comments that appeared to bring the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran closer, Netanyahu took Washington to task for rebuffing his call to set a "red line" for Iran's nuclear program, which has already prompted four rounds of U.N. sanctions.

"The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time.' And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?'" said Netanyahu, speaking in English.

"Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel," he added, addressing a news conference with Bulgaria's prime minister.

"UNPRECEDENTED ATTACK"

The website of Israel's daily newspaper Haaretz called his words "an unprecedented verbal attack on the U.S. government".

Iran makes no secret of its hostility to Israel, widely assumed to be the region's only nuclear-armed power, but says its nuclear program is purely peaceful.

Netanyahu's relations with Obama have been tense because of Iran and other issues, such as Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

But he has never framed his differences with Obama - who has pledged he will "always have Israel's back" and is deep in a re-election campaign - in moral terms.

Obama has been seeking to shore up his advantage over Romney with Jewish voters - who could make a difference in election battleground states like Florida and Ohio - by recently stressing his rock-solid support for Israel's security.

He received 78 percent of the Jewish vote in the 2008 election, but a nationwide Gallup poll in June showed him down to 64 percent backing versus Romney's 29 percent.

While seeking to put Netanyahu in his place might not go down well with pro-Israel voters, the White House may also be trying to avoid the prospects of an embarrassing encounter at a difficult time in U.S.-Israeli relations.

When the two men met in the Oval Office in May 2011, Netanyahu lectured Obama on Jewish history and criticized his approach to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.

Netanyahu's office had offered a solution to the leaders' scheduling problems by having him visit Washington before his U.N. speech on Sept. 28, the Israeli official said. But the White House did not accept the idea.

Obama, who is keeping up a busy schedule of campaign rallies around the country, is expected to take a break to address the United Nations on Sept. 25.

Netanyahu's harsh comments on Tuesday followed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks on Monday that the United States would not set a deadline in further talks with Iran, and that there was still time for diplomacy to work.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that Washington would have little more than a year to act to stop Iran if it decided to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran has threatened to retaliate against Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf if it is attacked, and any such conflict could throw Obama's re-election bid off course.

DEADLINE

Netanyahu did not mention Clinton by name but pointedly parroted her use of the word "deadline," saying:

"If Iran knows that there is no 'deadline', what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining a nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs ...

"So far we can say with certainty that diplomacy and sanctions haven't worked. The sanctions have hurt the Iranian economy but they haven't stopped the Iranian nuclear program. That's a fact. And the fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs."

Despite the recent tougher Israeli rhetoric, over the past week, Netanyahu, in calling for a "red line," had appeared to be backing away from military action and preparing the ground for a possible meeting with Obama.

Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Israelis do not want their military to strike Iran without U.S. support.

"Despite the differences and importance of maintaining Israel's independence of action, we must remember the importance of partnership with the United States and try as much as possible not to hurt that," a statement from his office said. See Chick's LOVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE.